The fundamental question is whether self-recognition, empathy and social structure are enough to allow an elephant or a dolphin to play inside of a virtual world.

Still, I can think of a really cheap experiment off-hand: Get a wii, and attach the controllers to the elephant’s trunks. Get a projector, and project the screen so that two elephants can stand side by side. Create a pong game. Let them play pong. Then let them play tennis. Then Warcraft. Then make sure that they get some physical exercise.

I have outrageous plans for more in-depth BnDCI and Elephant-Computer-Interaction (ECI), and I expect to sketch those out in the next week or so, esp. if I’m feeling particularly bad writer’s block.

Being previously unfamiliar with the well-known human > great ape > dolphin > elephant hierarchy of “skill at jeopardy,” I did find this line comical on the first read:

““After the recent discovery that dolphins are capable of recognizing themselves in the mirror, elephants seemed the next logical species for testing”

Natch. Elephants often come after dolphins on lists of things.

In response to your own question, there is in fact at least one bonobo who can play video games. He’s Kanzi, the much-noted and oft-debated ape who can “talk” and understand human speech ( http://primatology.org/2006/07/11/kanzi-playin-pacman/ ). He is not particularly good, but I do think he understands what he is doing. No need to give him a big hairy ape body and stick him in the trees — he understands that bow-headed half-moon we call Ms. Pacman as his avatar just fine.